This is the most bizarre news day for NASA ever.
CNN is reporting that NASA has found cut wires on computers slated to go onboard the International Space Station, and it may be sabotage.
The U.S. space agency NASA on Thursday confirmed it had discovered the apparent sabotage of a noncritical component of the international space station due to be carried up by the space shuttle Endeavour. It launched an investigation after finding cut wires in a piece of computer equipment intended to transfer data from station sensors to the ground, the agency said.
Yikes. Bizarrely, the rest of the CNN article says nothing more about this, and instead just gives mundane facts about the next Endeavour mission.
However, at the top of the CNN article is this:
Story Highlights
- NASA reports apparent sabotage after computer found with wires cut
- Computer supposed to be sent to the international space station in two weeks
- NASA hopes to repair computer in time for August 7 launch
And I think I am stunned by NASA once again. They plan on launching those computer parts anyway? In just two weeks?
Does anyone else think this is nuts? Sure, the parts are "non-critical", but if this is sabotage, then maybe, just maybe, there might be other things that were sabotaged as well. I’m sure is investigating this, though it’s not apparent in that perversely short and uninformative article. But it’s hard to understand how this could be "apparent sabotage" on any scale and have NASA still want to go ahead with the mission. At the very least, isn’t this a Federal issue, and wouldn’t the FBI in there? I would expect the government might want to ground the Shuttle fleet pending an investigation.
Sigh. We have almost no info, so I won’t speculate any more. But obviously there is a a lot more going on here than we’re hearing.
Criminy. What day.
Update: BABlogge JR Keller commented that Yahoo has much more info. This was a lone act, and the contractor that employed the saboteur notified NASA over a week ago. Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA’s space operations chief, said "”The damage is very obvious. It’s easy to detect. It’s not a mystery to us… I don’t want to speculate on motivation… There’s an active investigation going on and I’d rather let that get handled that way… There’s no concern about anything that’s on orbit." So there was quite a bit more to know, and it wasn’t in the CNN article. NASA obviously feels comfortable that this was a contained event, and feels safe to launch the Shuttle.
July 26th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
Phil, didn’t you work for nasa at some point? See. This is what happens when you quit. Obviously they are so lost without Dr. Plait that they have been unable to remember simple things like “Cutting wires is bad” or “wait a while before going to space when you’ve been drinking”
July 26th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
[…] (more…) […]
July 26th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
What? Really?
That’s scary news… Or not. I hope nothing will put the astronauts in the station in danger but somehow if this was done in such an amateur way I wouldn’t be too scared about hidden sabbotage.
July 26th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
Certainly has me scratching my head…
July 26th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
Maybe we should get Oscar the Cat to stay at NASA too see if he can predict any kind of Sabotage.
Hopefully, he won’t find any drunk astronauts doing the sabotaging.
July 26th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
This is unbelieveable. NASA doesn’t seem to be freaking out about this (which they should be!).
July 26th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6918490.stm
BBC report on it
July 26th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
It seems this was an obvious sabotage. Possibly to
hide something more hidden like a virus embedded
in the software
The wires could be repaired but the virus or Trojan
Horse, or whatever could still be in the machine.
July 26th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
I would be worried if NASA *was* freaking out. It sounds like they have a good handle on the problem, and are dealing with it accordingly.
Freaking out and running around like headless chickens does nobody any good.
July 26th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
Read all the way down to the bottom of the Yahoo report:
“The subcontractor supplies computer equipment and strain gauges for the international space station, as well as wing sensor systems for the shuttle. NASA has surveyed all the parts that were provided by the subcontractor, Gerstenmaier said.”
This provides even more reasons to not freak out over the news — from the sound of things, the hardware that this individual could have sabotaged is limited in scope, and has all been checked out.
FWIW, the Yahoo page seems to come almost verbatim from the AP:
http://www.physorg.com/news104691405.html
July 26th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
[…] sources reported that a computer that is supposed to fly aboard shuttle Endeavour in less than two weeks, was […]
July 26th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
[…] Sabotage of Computer for the ISS. […]
July 26th, 2007 at 8:13 pm
what i find bizre is this is a reliable story from CNN!!
July 26th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
[…] NASA finds apparent sabotage of computers for ISS This is the most bizarre news day for NASA ever. […]
July 26th, 2007 at 8:45 pm
Check this out posted on Space.com:
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — At least twice, astronauts were allowed to fly after flight surgeons and other astronauts warned they were so drunk they posed a flight-safety risk, an aviation weekly reported Thursday, citing a special panel studying astronaut health.
The independent panel found “heavy use of alcohol” before launch, according to Aviation Week & Space Technology, which reported the finding on its Web site.
The alcohol use by astronauts was within the standard 12-hour “bottle-to-throttle” rule applied to NASA flight crew members, Aviation Week said. The panel was created following the arrest in February of former space shuttle flier Lisa Nowak, who was implicated in a love triangle.
NASA’s space operations chief, Bill Gerstenmaier, said Thursday it would be inappropriate for him to discuss the matter before the report is released Friday when a news conference is planned.
Asked if he had ever personally had to deal with a safety issue involving an inebriated astronaut in space, Gerstenmaier replied: “The obvious answer is no. I’ve never had any instances of that.
“There’s not been a disciplinary action or anything I’ve been involved with regarding this type of activity,” he said.
NASA plans to release the findings of a pair of reviews — one by the outside committee and the other by an internal panel — into astronauts’ health Friday.
The independent panel’s NASA consultant and its eight members, which include Air Force experts in aerospace medicine and clinical psychiatry, did not immediately return phone messages or e-mails from the Associated Press Thursday afternoon.
Aviation Week said the report citing drunkenness — ordered by NASA Administrator Michael Griffin — does not deal directly with Nowak or mention any other astronaut by name.
July 26th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
Here is my husband’s response in Urbanagora:
http://www.urbanagora.com/2007/07/enough-is-enough.html
July 26th, 2007 at 11:49 pm
Is it just me, or has NASA been having trouble with its contractors lately? (That guy at JSC with the gun or something, when was that?) Or am I just picking out the hits and ignoring the misses? I guess it’s probably the latter, but still–contractor sabatoge? Yikes.
-astro groupie
July 26th, 2007 at 11:50 pm
Jebus, im having flashbacks from the Contact movie. (though the book was better, I thought the terrorist plot played out nicely on the big screen) The only motivation that I can see is the guy who fears science is erroding his faith.
July 27th, 2007 at 2:00 am
ABC News is confirming what I guessed soon after hearing the news: that the damage was apparently caused by a “disgruntled employee” of one of the subcontractors . . .
July 27th, 2007 at 2:06 am
Hmm . . . the link to the ABC News story failed to appear. Let me try again:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=3418691&page=1
July 27th, 2007 at 5:01 am
To Bart: I’m sure that isn’t the case here, but I’m also quite certain that something like the Contact terrorist episode will occur sooner or later. The higher science climbs, the greater the percentage of people that will fear it because they can’t understand it. We need more science teachers teaching proper science and we need them NOW!
July 27th, 2007 at 6:06 am
Bart, the same idea occured to me as soon as I read the story. I would suggest that any faith that is so fragile that it can be threatened by the exploration of the Universe is a faith that is not worth having to begin with (YEC, Flat Earth, etc.).
July 27th, 2007 at 7:27 am
Zim, Bart, I can easily imagine other motives; for one, spite after that employee being denied a raise. (And yes, people do get that petty and stupid. I’ve seen it happen in person, right before the guy (in this case) took a swing at his union rep and was frog-marched out of the plant.) Don’t fall into the trap of seeing Fundie opponents everywhere; after all, it’s that “for us or against us” mentality that’s the most dangerous part of zealotry.
As to the rest of the news, with all the problems cropping up this week I’m hoping this is some sort of “lancing the boil” for the space program… fingers crossed that this is the worst of it, and that the wound gets bound up properly afterwards so it doesn’t get reinfected.
— Steve
July 27th, 2007 at 7:58 am
[…] found via Bad Astronomy posts here, here, and […]
July 27th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
[…] Things seem to be all out of whack. An employee of a subcontractor is being investigated for sabotaging a computer set to go to the International Space Station with Endeavour two weeks from now. The flight is proceeding. Phil has a good piece about it on BA. […]
July 27th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
That is weird. I’m glad NASA found the problem early. I wonder how close the NASA subs check out their workers.